Introduction

Hello all, my name is Russianfajita and this is my guide to Lissandra. Lissandra is the newest addition to League of Legends. As I play Lissandra I am constantly learning new things. As Lissandra becomes a better known champion, guides will begin to appear everywhere. I will constantly update this guide for the viewers and please leave comments on how I can improve my build.

Lore

Lissandra magic twists the pure power of ice into something dark and terrible. With the force of her black ice, she does more than freeze – she impales and crushes those who oppose her. To the terrified denizens of the north, she is known only as “The Ice Witch.” The truth is much more sinister: Lissandra is a corrupter of nature who plots to unleash an ice age on the world.

Centuries ago, Lissandra betrayed her tribe to evil creatures, known as the Frozen Watchers, in return for power. That was the last day that warm blood ran through her veins. With her corrupted tribesmen and the strength of the Watchers, she swept across the land like a terrible blizzard. As her empire spread, the world grew colder and ice choked the land. When the Watchers were defeated by ancient heroes, Lissandra did not lose faith and swore to prepare the world for their return.

Lissandra worked to purge all knowledge of the Watchers from the world. Using magic to take human form, she masqueraded as numerous seers and elders. Over the course of generations, she rewrote the stories of the Freljord, and so the history of its people changed. Today the fragmented retelling of the Watchers are seen as children’s tales. But this deception wasn't enough – Lissandra also needed an army.

She set her sights on the noble Frostguard tribe. Lissandra knew corrupting the Frostguard would take centuries, and so she launched her greatest deception. She murdered and stole the identity of the Frostguard leader. Then she slowly began to warp the tribe’s proud traditions. When her human form grew old, she faked her own death and then murdered her successor to steal her identity. With each generation, the Frostguard grew more insular, cruel and twisted. Today, the world still sees them as a noble and peaceful tribe that guards against evil creatures like the Ice Witch. In truth, they now serve the witch and long for the glorious return of the Watchers.

Lissandra knows that on that day nations will fall and the world will be reborn in ice.

How to play Lissandra

This is a mid lane guide, but I figured if I was writing a "How To" I should put all the lanes and how to play them.

Mid lane: Lissandra is the master of mobility and crowd control skills. She is an aggressive mid, which makes her a risky champion. Using her AoE abilities, Lissandra can create gaps as well as she can close gap quickly with her Glacial Path. Glacial Path lets her Teleport to enemies as well as manipulate terrain. If you have ambushed the enemy, your combinations of stuns should be enough to ensure the kill.

If you were thinking about solo top the AoE on Ice Shard allows her to hug her turret and deal damage effectively. Ice Shard is also great for counter ganks. If the enemy sees you pushing there turret the counter gank lure worked. In this situations Lissandra can cast Frozen Tomb(If you're level 6) on herself, this should ensuring your survival.

I have put the team fight "how to" in the combo sequence section, it made more sense to put it there rather than repeat myself.

Runes

Mid Lane Runes

These give you more damage of the start, it blends nicely will Glyph of Ability Power. It will increase your damage dealt early game- late game and is by far the best mark. You'll notice more of a difference with this mark over the other marks.

This rune gives you 0.41 mana regeneration every 5 seconds. This rune is useful because it helps with your lack of mana off the start and works well with Catalyst the Protector. It should help you out sustain and ensure you have the spells you need to kill the enemy.

In the occasion that you are playing jungle Lissandra, these might come in helpful. Considering you are very squishy of the start, these will help with your survival in the jungle. You may also consider Seal of Health Regeneration

This glyph will boost your base ability power and boost your damage of the start. The additional 10.17 ability power is beneficial if you want your kills before you hit higher levels. This glyph also works well with Doran's Ring because together they boost your base ability power substantially.

I personally just prefer this Quintessence because it gives you more base ability power of the start. The quintessences help with your kills early game and they work well on top of Doran's Ring.

Offensive Masteries

This increases ability power by 5 when Ignite is on cool down, which can be really helpful early game. Might not be a noticeable difference, but it will make up for Ignite in the mean time.

This mastery decreases your cool-downs by 4%. This extremely helpful early game for Lissandra's long ability cool-downs. This should help with farm, pushing, combat etc.

This deals additional damage to minions and monsters, this helps with your lane push. Considering Lissandra can push the lane quickly already, this will help you be an annoying middle and help you counter ADC mids. Also with the blue buff under your belt you could noticeable be out playing the opposing mid player.

Blast scales ability power until level 18 giving you 18 extra ability power points, which late game makes a difference, but not so much in early. Although this doesn't help you right off the start per-say it's still a great mastery to have for later.

Omnomnomnom, more ability power. This will help early game, and help ensure that you get kills. All in all this will help out your damage and your team. Lissandra needs the ability power off the start to match the other ability power mids.

Putting points in this skill will give you an extra 5% ability power. This skill is better for levels 1 through 10. After level 10, it doesn't make a huge difference, but is still great to have. This is why you grab Rabadon, so you can increase your ability power by 10%.

This will allow you to have more ability power on basic attacks, this can help with those lucky times when you get an auto attack that follows your enemy when they are at low health.

You gain an additional 5% damage on enemies below 50% health. Now 5% is not that much, but combine with magic pen. this could make it devastating for enemies who try to escape your beastly ways.

This helps you in mid lane. It will make the buffs you have generate more effect, ensuring that your lane can be pushed successfully and with more "OOMPH".

Primary Spells

This is a commonly used spell by summoner's. It will "ignite" the enemy and deal DoT effects. This summoner spell can be used with Lissandra and is recommended by myself. When you combo your enemy they may try and escape with minimal health. If you drop an Ignite on them, chances are you got the kill. This spell is best used after the enemy has been released from your Frozen Tomb or has merely been damaged by it.

This summoner spell is used to escape enemy pursuits, which comes in handed more often then not. It works well after you're trying to pursue/ escape your enemy. I would recommend using Flash to attack/evade an enemy and then Glacial Path toward/away from them or vise versa.

Alternative Spells

I recommend to use it to slow the enemy down, so that you can catch up and use Glacial Path to catch them. It can also decreases damage dealt to you, so you can escape enemy pursuers with a higher rate of survival. This is also very effective in team fights after the chosen summoner has been impaired or stunned, it will slow them down allowing you or your team mates to get the kill and move on the next enemy.

This spell allows you to gain additional movement speed to chase/escape an enemy. If you're a new summoner and own Lissandra you should use this because Flash will be unavailable to you.

This spell is very useful to protect your turret(s) or even an ally(s) in high tension situations. For example if Teemo is pushing a lane of minions you could teleport to the nearest turret, minion, or placed items ( Teemo's mushroom's, sight wards).

Use this summoner spell if the enemy team has a lot of crowd control, but we all know Lissandra is the master of CC. This can be super useful when countering a champion who is using Ignite. I.E. If a champion has you at low enough health that ignite would kill you, you could hit your Cleanse and be safe from death.

If I had to choose any Alternative Spell this would be my first choice over any other. Simply because Lissandra runs out of mana quickly early game. This summoner's spell works great with you Greater Seal of Mana Regeneration, for it will give you a quick burst of mana, so you can get back to killing.

Abilities/Skills

PASSIVE: Every 18 seconds, Lissandra's next ability costs no mana. Cooldown reduction does not affect Iceborn, but the cooldown is reduced by 1 second whenever Lissandra impairs an enemy's movement with an ability (does not apply to movement-impairing effects from items).

This passive is good in early game situations where you've run out of mana and are waiting for it to regeneration. It also helps when you just need that one spell to kill the enemy opponent.

I enjoy this spell because when you hit an enemy this spell breaks into three smaller shards hitting anything else around it. Works great in team fights because it normally damages all the enemies within the designated area. Also it is quite useful against turret hugger's who always aggravate me extremely. NOTE: Be careful with this spell it has such a low cool down sometimes you don't remember how much it costs to cast it. If you use this spell mindlessly you'll run out of mana quickly and be unable to deal damage to your enemy.

This spell is good for pursuing and escaping enemies, but not good for harassing. You have to be very close to the enemy which can sometimes be risky and unsafe. Speaking of risky and unsafe though, Lissandra is a risky champion to play in the first place you need to jump right in on team fights and get close to deal high damage.

This spell is your gap closer, this is the spell you use to initiate fights. This is the first spell you'll use that will get you close ready to stun and deal your damage. This is your most useful spell, use it wisely. It's cool down is fairly long and can be miss used easily.

This spell shouldn't be used to harass either. This spell is ideal for team fights and multiple enemy fights this spell ensures your safety when in the "danger" zone of the enemy. This spell "could" be used well when escaping enemies, although that isn't what it "should" be used for.

Combo Sequence

When in combat use the following combo to control and manipulate the enemy team. HINT: This works great in team fights!

First you must make sure you're far enough away to not take damage, but close enough to us Glacial Path (Stay behind your tanks). Spam your Ice Shard, then when the fight has been initiated shoot your Glacial Path into the enemy team and hit your E again. After you are inside the "danger" zone cast Ring of Frost to stun all the enemies around you, proceed by casting Frozen Tomb on yourself or an enemy (ideally yourself). Cast your Glacial Path out of the "danger" zone to escape, and hopefully winning the team fight. NOTE: This is a very risky technique and is not recommended in all situations. Also Frozen Tomb maybe a hard land.
TIP: Hit your R without using your cursor to cast Frozen Tomb on yourself.

When you're jungling as [[lissandra be sure to follow these ganking techniques

Farming

When farming you want to be far enough away from your turret so that minions will not be hit, but you also want to to close enough so enemies cannot gank you. Use this picture as example.Also when maintaining control of the farm, when an enemy comes into the minion group aim to counter hit them. In other words when they hit your minion you hit them. Remember not to over extend when counter hitting or you risk damaging yourself.

Zoning

Zoning is one of the most important parts of LoL. If you don't know the zones of the map, you should learn them. In the following picture it shows the safe zones in the mid lane, this zoning pattern is the same for each lane and can be extended or narrowed for each turret that is downed.

Ward Placements

Placing wards is an important factor of game play. I suggest that every time you recall to your spawn you buy the prioritized item then buy two wards to set in one of the following spots around summoner's rift.

Jungle Route

Firstly, I would like to state that Lissandra is not ideal for jungle. In the case that you have to here's what you'll need to do.

At the start, get your Hunter's Machete and your five Health Potion's. When arriving at blue buff have your mid and top lane to leash for you. Have your top lane tank the golem for you. Use Health Potion's accordingly. Get your mid to leash the wolves for you then proceed to wraiths. Kill the wraith camp, get the health. Travel to red buff (By now Smite should be of CD). Kill red then recall unless you're feeling lucky and want to get wraiths again. When you return to the jungle look for a gank, if none are needed, return to the jungle and continue.

Jungle Timers/Buff Control

Here are the timers for the jungle, there is also an app for smart phones which count down for you. The smart phone app can be really help to train you and make sure your on time with the jungle.

Buffs

Primary Items

This solves Lissandra's mana and squishiness problem, it also gives you bonus's every minute and restores health and mana upon leveling up.

This is a must have for mages, it increases magic pen. and increases your movement speed.

All champions that use Ability Power get this item. YOU NEED IT!!! No exceptions.

This is a great item to have, it gives you a lot of ability power
and it's active is ideal for turret diving and team fights. Simply follow the combo and you'll discover the reason why we use Zhonya's Hourglass.

This is a good item to have it gives you a decent amount of ability power and it reduces your CD! This item will also deal grievous wounds on enemies lower than 40% health.

This is good for ability power junglers. This reduce the CD of Smite, increases damage dealt to monster and gives you spell vamp.

This item works well with Lissandra. It gives you 2% DoT damage on enemies and 4% if they're slowed (we all know they are!).

Alternative Items

I use this because it's just a fantastic little staff. I gives you ability power and reduces enemy magic resistance. Two in one package!

This item CAN be more rewarding than Void Staff. If the enemy team has less then 100 Magic Resistance use this.

This item gives you the ability to rock team fights, but there are other items I would choose first.

This item helps with mana and your mana regeneration, this also makes a turrets cast time longer allowing you to get away.

This gives you ability power and gives you a team buff which is really helpful if you a heavy loaded ability power team.

This is good if you want to have lots of mana and also reduces your CD more!

This gives you 1000 MANA!!! If you're worried about mana this is the one item you need.

This item is good for Lissandra. This item helps with her mana problem and decreases her CD, which is also amazing for Lissandra.

ChangeLog

Added jungle and top lane masteries and items in headings page.
Removed Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Iceborn Gauntlet.
Made Mid Lane and Top Lane the same build.
Added more detail to reasoning(Still in progress)
Added a separate Top Lane build(Mastery explanation still in progress)
Reviewed comments and rethought my items(Fixed them accordingly)

What I'm going to be updating

-Add additional runes that you can use instead of the ones listed.
-Add color to make the guide more interesting and textured.
-How to play Lissandra in bottom lane.
-Add a video for jungling with Lissandra.
-Add top lane and jungle masteries to the masteries section of the guide.
-Jungle Masteries and Runes explained
-Add Glacial Path ganking positions

League of Legends is a team based, real time strategy game set in a mythical world of swords & magic where epic battles decide the fate of mystical nations. Game players take on the role of a Summoner who conjures and controls champions to fight for them at the Institute of War. During game play champions gain experience and items to enhance their skills and abilities. How players develop and play their champions can be the difference between a crushing defeat or a glorious victory!